RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
Arizona State University, in partnership with the National Informal STEM Education Network, will build fieldwide capacity for sustainability by empowering professionals, engaging public audiences, and leveraging museum and community assets to help build a sustainable future for people and the planet. The project will engage 90 museum professionals in a six-month professional development program, who along with other staff at their organizations will receive support in planning, developing, and/or implementing a sustainability-related project that aligns with their museum’s mission and their community’s priorities. A community of practice will promote ongoing learning and sharing of experiences among program participants. Additional professionals across the museum field will benefit from an online workshop series and other resources produced by the project.
This project provides opportunities for Indigenous youth to transform and be transformed by opportunities for STEAM innovation and knowledge building. This project will create opportunities outside of the classroom to invest in youths’ engagement, and interest, and self-efficacy in STEAM by supporting explorations in community settings that value multiple languages and ways of knowing. Through this project, youth can engage in pressing community needs—such as climate change impacts, food and water security, chronic health crises, and out-migration— with community experts, elders, and knowledge holders. The project will expand the picture of what Informal STEAM learning and meaningful engagement in STEAM looks like in Pacific Island contexts. It will employ a collaborative research framework to investigate how Informal STEAM learning activities that foster intergenerational learning—particularly the exploration of traditional stories and the creation of prototypes, storytelling packages, and hands-on models that illustrate Indigenous STEAM practices—impact youths’ engagement and interest in STEAM and self-efficacy over time. By building the capacity of participants—particularly Pacific Islander youth—to become co-researchers, -evaluators and -designers, the project will cultivate spaces for participants to advocate for their interests, perspectives, and needs. This research within the Pacific region is important for fostering science literacy and broadening participation in STEAM fields since early interest in science is a potential indicator of future STEAM interest and career choices.
The goal of the project is to investigate how youth’s inductive exploration of local technologies featured in Indigenous stories impact their engagement and interest in STEAM, Informal STEAM learning, and future decision making that affect youth participation in STEAM pathways. The project will be implemented in Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia (comprising the four states of Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap) and will address the core research question: To what extent does youths’ participation in STEAM-based storytelling and story exploration lead to increases in youths’ engagement and interest in STEAM and self-efficacy over time? The project approaches story exploration as a cultural and metalinguistic process to investigate a story not solely as an artifact or a process, but as a doorway to investigations of history, Indigenous STEAM, and local innovation. Two cohorts of youth participants will engage in summer and spring out-of-school programs led by elders, partner organizations, and project staff through which youth investigate storytelling, design, research practice, and service learning. Each cohort will also create digital storytelling packages and/or model kits to share with audiences through participant-designed community-level and cross-region sharing events. The project is expected to reach 140 youth and 30 elders. To measure learning outcomes, the project builds upon extant tools to gauge Informal STEAM learning engagement. Lessons about the application of these tools will contribute to the Informal STEAM learning knowledge base—especially regarding underrepresented communities in STEAM. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is the overarching theoretical and methodological framework for the project and will engage participants as co-researchers through multiple methods of observation, data gathering, and analysis. The project will also create community-driven research opportunities that advances the generation of knowledge on topics that are often left unexplored because: (1) Micronesians as underrepresented minorities are not usually at the table during research design; (2) non-Micronesian/Indigenous epistemologies are usually privileged throughout the research; and (3) there is a lack of trust when any outsider asks to look in, especially when racialized colonial histories still leave daily impacts. This project encourages all participants to consider and develop answers to this question: Stewards of whose knowledge? Research findings and educational materials and resources will be disseminated to researchers, program developers, informal science institutions, partner organizations, formal and informal educators, and communities.
The Portland Children’s Museum will open a new exhibition, “Drip City,” which focuses on water as a precious natural resource that has shaped the region’s geography, weather, and culture. Following an IMLS-funded evaluation and design process, the museum will engage a local fabrication company to construct and install exhibit components that explore concepts in science, engineering, and art. The museum will also engage community members in the design and testing of associated programs that target families and children ages 0 to 7. Museum staff will evaluate all exhibit elements to ensure they are working properly, accessible as intended, and making children’s learning visible to adult audiences.
This paper reports about an informal learning experience – Something Very Fishy (SVF) – which is focused on ocean conservation and climate change. Results from 49 elementary school student workbooks indicated that experiencing SVF improved their understanding of ocean conservation, increased their interest in pursuing science careers, but did not affect their actions towards conservation. Survey results from 40 undergraduate students who helped run SVF indicated that the more efficacious they felt about communicating marine science and the more identified they felt with the scientific
Something Very Fishy Musical Theatre STEAM Exhibit is a collaborative project pairing a ocean-themed musical theatre production with a hands-on marine science exhibit in an informal community setting. The program is designed to increase the awareness of ocean conservation issues in children grades K-5. The storyline of the musical follows the lives of Sandy Carson (marine biologist), Mr. Stu Pidder (fishermen) and a cast of marine animal puppets (Sunny, Boss and Octavia) as they navigate one disaster after another in the ocean that comes to impact their lives and livelihoods. The story is told as a bedtime story between two narrators, mother and child, home sick with a fever. As the story unfolds the rising ocean temperatures and rising fever in the child tell the story of our how the health of the ocean is inextricably linked to our own health. The theatrical production ends when the characters hatch a community-based solution to work together to save the ocean by starting an eco-tourism venture. Then the audience members then begin a imaginary eco-tour of the Florida Keys around the performing arts center where they meet artists, fishermen, park rangers, scientists, engineers, and veterinarians working to save our oceans and the marine life within. To assess the impact of our program, the children complete a pre-post survey in the form of a personal meaning map drawing of what it looks like under the ocean along with a STEM, arts, non-STEM career survey including professions they met in the show and on the virtual eco-tour. Children who participate in the program demonstrate a significant increase in understanding how humans both impact and help solve the issues facing the oceans and their connection to our changing climate and show an increased interest in STEM careers related to ocean conservation.
Reflecting on the practice of storytelling, this practice insight explores how collaborations between scholars and practitioners can improve storytelling for science communication outcomes with publics. The case studies presented demonstrate the benefits of collaborative storytelling for inspiring publics, promoting understanding of science, and engaging publics more deliberatively in science. The projects show how collaboration between scholars and practitioners [in storytelling] can happen across a continuum of scholarship from evaluation and action research to more critical thinking
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michelle RiedlingerJenni MetcalfeAyelet Baram-TsabariMarta EntradasMarina JoubertLuisa Massarani
Can we really say what type of story has impact on us, and what type of story does not? Evidence suggests that we can. But we need to better understand the way that stories work on us, at a neural and empathetic level, and better understand the ways that the elements of stories, such as structure and metaphor work. By combining scientific research with the deeper wisdom of traditional storytelling we have both a deep knowledge married to scientific evidence — which can be very powerful tools for science communicators.